Fashion and style are the same. (Sorry, style and fashion camps, but it’s true.) Our tendency as humans to overthink and complicate matters has failed us yet again. Why polarize, why place a wall between two clones acting a little differently extrinsically but intrinsically are the same?

Both fashion and style can be used interchangeably, without fail: my fashion is unique; my style is unique. The room was fashioned in the deco style; the room was styled in the deco fashion. There’s hairstyle or fashion of hair. There’s lifestyle or fashion of life, et cetera (etc.) infinity.

Sartorially speaking, there are countless types (looks) of style or fashion: to name a few, western, boho, trad, hipster, grunge, homeless, pop, hip hop, rock, punk, funk, avant garde, bespoke, couture, sexy, rural, suburban, urban, sophisticated, elegant, luxe, redux, contemporary, any culture, decade or time, hybrids galore. To that end, “the classics” aren’t collectively “style,” they’re a type of style or fashion, a subset of the fashion-style superset; nor are personal styling or fashioning quirks “style” and everything else “fashion.” Never mind the irrelevant nuances of each camp. Never mind esoteric idiosyncrasy. Mind exoteric sensibility. At the end of the day, style and fashion are all about clothes and accessories, hair and makeup—nothing more, nothing less. In fact, it would make more sense to name your style or fashion after yourself, id est (i.e.), examined in the form of the question, “What’s your style?” I would answer, “It’s Andy’s fashion; it’s completely my own.”

STYLE IS CHOICE EXPRESSED, a decision made for all to see, or if a fart, maybe not for everyone but in secret, but still a decision to squelch the butt belch until you’re alone because that’s your style. Understand the gravitas of this notion? Not the surreptitious fart, the progenitorial implication of style’s sheer omnipotence. Let me say it again, it’s scary important: Style is everything involving choice, every decision made expressed. Coco Chanel was onto something when she said, “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” She almost pinpointed the connection between fashion and choice, period.

STYLE IS EVERYTHING, EVEN YOUR EXISTENCE, i.e., we, all of us, are our mother’s choice not to abort us. We are our parents’ style expressed, their identities combined, the fashion of Mom and Dad. Aww …

Strip anyone of their style and who, nay, what is left? Certainly not anyone I’d want to know, let alone meet. The thing remaining would be an it, an identity-less organism of no consequence. Even the most boring, unoriginal person in the world isn’t an it.

Stop playing to your it-side—it doesn’t even know how to dance. Play to your you-side as if you were a walking symphony. Harmonize to your tune of identity.

Your choices express who you are. What are you really saying to the world? What kind of visual notes and flavors, and behavioral colors are you creating?